High intake of calcium rises risk for prostate cancer in men

Washington: A new study has found that high intake of calcium causes prostate cancer among African-American men who are genetically good absorbers of the mineral.

“High dietary intake of calcium has long been linked to prostate cancer but the explanation for this observation has been elusive,” said Gary G. Schwartz, Ph.D., associate professor of cancer biology, urology, and public health sciences at Wake Forest Baptist and co-author on the study.

Schwartz and colleagues from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Cancer Prevention Institute of California studied 783 African-American men living in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas, 533 of whom were diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Their study found that men who reported the highest intake of calcium were two times more likely to have localized and advanced prostate cancer than those who reported the lowest.

Men with a genotype associated with poor calcium absorption were 59 percent less likely to have been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer than men who genetically were the best absorbers of calcium.
And, among men with calcium intake below the median, genetically poor absorbers had a 50 percent decreased risk of having advanced prostate cancer than the best absorbers.

The finding is available in the online issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.